Phoenix Lander Goes Silent, Mission Ends

Having not heard a peep out of the Phoenix Lander since November 2nd, NASA has determined that the resilient little rover has finally ceased operating and they are pulling the plug on the mission.

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point," said Barry Goldstein Phoenix mission project manager. "However, since we've been surprised by the robustness of this vehicle, we're going to keep listening. As the orbiters fly overhead every two hours, we'll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix to see if it is alive."

"This is an Irish wake rather than a funeral," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars exploration programme.

"We should celebrate what Phoenix and the Phoenix team has done and where it is going to take us in the future. [There were] a lot of lessons learned in this mission for us that will feed forward to future missions. We learned a lot about handling of soils, soil consistency, and how difficult it can be."

It has been fun following the story and receiving the twitter tweets from the Phoenix team! Perhaps we'll see the day when Phoenix rises again to hails from the passing orbiters?

BBC Story here.

YouTube And MGM Strike Deal

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios (MGM) will be the first major movie studio to post full length feature films on YouTube. MGM will start off with some classic movies such as "The Magnificent Seven" and 10 year old television shows like "American Gladiator". The move would appear to be a good one for each side with YouTube trying to play catchup to Hulu and MGM struggling for it's very existence. “We believe in comprehensiveness, and we want to have deals with everybody,” said Jordan Hoffner, the director of content partnerships for YouTube. “We want to be able to give users the most content possible.” For their part, MGM's co-president Jim Packer says “We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once,” and “I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.”

I must say, I'm a little excited to think that I might get to see some classics from my childhood but American Gladiator? Really?

NYTimes and CNet.

Honda's Wearable Assistive Walker

Honda has unveiled a robotic walking aid that they claim reduces stress on the legs and knees of the wearer and enables them to preform tasks by expending less effort. "This should be as easy to use as a bicycle," said engineer Jun Ashihara at Honda's Tokyo headquarters. "It reduces stress, and you should feel less tired." The device is computer controlled and looks like a bicycle seat with legs. Honda envisions it's auto factory workers donning the devices to enable them to perform their tasks more easily, this is especially important to the company considering Japan's aging population.
CNN has more detail here.

Apple Sells More Smartphones In Quarter Than RIM

Steve Jobs is reveling in the fact that for the first time since the iPhone was launched it's sales out paced those of Research In Motions Blackberry devices. A report released Thursday by U.K.-based research firm Canalys showed Apple shipped approximately 6.8 million iPhones compared to RIM's 6 million Blackberry devices during the 3rd quarter of '08. Jobs said during a conference call announcing Apple's 3rd quarter results "I'd like to point out [a] remarkable milestone resulting from iPhone's outstanding performance last quarter," he said. "Apple beat RIM." The number gives Apple a 17.3 percent share of the overall 39 million smartphones shipped in the quarter and pushed the company into the number 2 spot behind Nokia who owns 38.9 percent of the market.

Canalys also noted however that RIM showed a year over year increase of 80% and that there were many factors at play. The 3rd quarter was expected to be high for Apple with the release of the iPhone 3G and RIM will likely have had many faithfuls awaiting the arrival of the Blackberry Storm.

CBC Story.

FBI Investigate Stolen Medical Records

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate an extortion attempt on a medical benefit management company from St. Louis. Express Scripts received a letter in October threatening to expose data about the companies clients, the letter contained personal information on about 75 members "including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, prescription information." “We have been conducting a thorough investigation since we received this threat and we are taking it very seriously,” said George Paz, chairman and chief executive, in a statement. “We are cooperating with the F.B.I. and are committed to doing what we can to protect our members’ personal information and to track down the person or persons responsible for this criminal act.”

The company has created a website to inform it's clients about the extortion attempt, and have made the following statement "We believe we have identified where the data involved in this situation was stored in our systems and have instituted enhanced controls." That's reassuring!

The company handles prescription benefits for approximately 50 million people for various health insurers, employers and union sponsored plans.

New York Times story.

Expert Says CNN Hologram Not Technically A Hologram

During Tuesdays CNN coverage of the US Election, anchormen Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper conducted live interviews "via hologram". Blitzer told CNN reporter Jessica Yellin that "You're a terrific hologram," during a segment where he spoke with a 3-D representation of Yellin, or so it would appear. Okay, I'm envisioning you reading this quote in a Simpson's Comic Book Guy voice..."They were quite sophisticated, no doubt," said Hans Jürgen Kreuzer, a theoretical physics professor at Dalhousie University and an expert on holography "But I immediately said to my wife that I don't think it has anything to do with holograms."

Kreuzer believes the images were tomograms or images that are captured from all sides, reconstructed by computers, and then displayed on screen much like the way that computer-generated special effects are added to movies.

Holograms, technically, are projected into space.

CBC story here.

Indian Moon Probe To Enter Lunar Orbit

A moon probe launched by India on October 22nd is maneuvering into a lunar orbit at a distance of about 100 km from the surface of the moon by Saturday, Nov. 8. The probe will produce a 3 dimensional atlas of the moon and study the chemical and mineral makeup of the surface. The craft is carrying a payload of 11 scientific components from India (5), the U.S. (2), Britain (1), Germany (1), Sweden (1) and Bulgaria (1). According to the CBC "The launch of Chandrayaan-1 is the first step of the country's long-term ambitions to conduct a manned moon mission by 2020. India has also announced plans for the launch of Chandrayaan-2 — which is expected to land a rover on the moon by 2012 — and a manned space mission by 2015 using Indian systems and technology."

Is There Hope For The Wooly Mammoth?

Japanese scientists have successfully cloned mice who's bodies where frozen for as long as 16 years and have postulated that the technique could be used to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species.

"Cloning animals by nuclear transfer provides an opportunity to preserve endangered mammalian species," they wrote.

"However, it has been suggested that the 'resurrection' of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded," they said.

Unlike other cloning attempts the mice used in these experiments where not cryogenicly frozen which posed a unique challenge as freezing causes cells to burst and can damage the DNA inside.

CBC Story.

Game Industry Not Sheltered From Economic Downturn Afterall

Game giant Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is laying off about 6 per cent of its work force to cut costs after posting a wider than expected quarterly net loss on Thursday. “Considering the slowdown at retail we've seen in October, we are cautious in the short term,” said John Riccitiello, chief executive, in a statement. “Longer term, we are very bullish on the game sector overall and on EA in particular.” The company said it expects about $50 million in annual pretax cost savings as a result of the layoffs, which will amount to about 500 - 600 positions across all functional areas. Wow, if you use the 600 number that puts the average salary + benefits for these positions at $83,333! Globe and Mail story.

Hodgman's Crystal Head Vodka Tasting

John Hodgman has prepared a Halloween taste test video for Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka. To my surprise Hodgman is rather serious during the brief video and seems to know his geography! I'd still like to see this stuff in the wild, is this an elaborate marketing scheme or does the stuff really exist?

Update: My curiousity was getting the better of me so I surfed over to the website of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liqour Corporation's website and a quick search reveals:

Crystal Head Vodka
SKU #: 8179
Place of Origin: NL
Litre Size: .750
Retail Price: $49.99
Total Available: 86

Mystery solved! Now how do I get a bottle here on Prince Edward Island...